The happy years of the Thorwalds
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The happy years of the Thorwalds |
| Country of production | Federal Republic of Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1962 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK from 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
John Olden Wolfgang Staudte |
| script |
Maria Matray Answald Kruger |
| production | Alexander Rakosi |
| music | Siegfried Franz |
| camera | Siegfried Hold |
| cut | Alice Ludwig-Rasch |
| occupation | |
| |
The Happy Years of the Thorwalds is a German feature film from 1962 with Elisabeth Bergner in the lead role, designed as a family chronicle . Directed by John Olden and Wolfgang Staudte .
action
During a large-scale birthday party in 1913, the early widowed principal of the Thorwald family gives in to the illusion of her six children. She believes that with her late husband's fortune, everyone is covered and that she can continue her lavish lifestyle. On this special day, Mrs. Thorwald gathered all her loved ones around her. There is only one person she dislikes completely: a certain Ernst Bieber, who was led by Dr. Schaub, the family's asset manager, was introduced to the same. Old Thorwald appeared to Bieber as not befitting of his class and his manners not as comme il faut .
19 years later, the family has gathered again. After a lost World War and the troubled times during the Weimar Republic, little remained of the exuberant predictions, wishes and dreams of the family members . Disappointment and disillusionment have spread. Most of the Thorwalds failed all along the line, only that Bieber, perceived as a mesalliance , who married one of the Thorwald daughters, can look back on a brilliant career. This now enables him to take revenge in a subtle way for the arrogance and humiliation of the class-conscious upper class family.
Production notes
The happy years of the Thorwalds were based on the play Die Zeit und die Conways by John Priestley . The shooting took place between August 27 and October 1, 1962 in Hamburg . The Hamburg-Wandsbek studio served as the studio .
The film, which premiered on November 16, 1962, marked the German-speaking comeback of the actress Elisabeth Bergner, who has lived in Great Britain since 1933 . For her performance on June 23, 1963 in Berlin she received the gold film in the category Best Actress .
John Olden suffered a heart attack while filming and had to be replaced. His colleague Wolfgang Staudte took over the direction and staged around two thirds of the film.
The couple Mathias Matthies and Ellen Schmidt created the film structures, Werner Schlagge provided the sound.
The film was broadcast for the first time on TV on June 1, 1968 on ZDF and has been repeated there several times since then (1986, 1992) and on ARD (1979).
criticism
The handbook films 1962/64 wrote: “Priestley's play 'Die Zeit und die Conways' became a boring family chronicle, transferred to Germany during the imperial era, with an unsatisfactory comeback by Elisabeth Bergner”.
The lexicon of international film said it was “little more than out of date entertainment”.
The Evangelische Film-Beobachter comes to a similar assessment : "No character image, but only wistful memories of a fate that is considered inevitable, conventionally filmed without reference to the present."
Web links
- The happy years of Thorwald in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The happy years of the Thorwalds at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Films 1962/64, Handbook VII of the Catholic Film Critics, p. 66.Dusseldorf 1965.
- ↑ The happy years of the Thorwalds. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Ev. Munich Press Association, Review No. 640/1962.